Conventionally, information is transferred between an HIE and EMR via messages exchanged between the two systems. For example, an EMR may know how to import lab results from an HIES. An EMR may provide a tab in its main application, sometimes known as the “community tab” which enables a user to view, but not manipulate or import, HIE-provided information about a patient. Varying medical technology between the HIE and EMR, combined with a lack of ability to semantically resolve the variation, may impose limitations to these modes of information transfer.
According to Wikipedia, an Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) is “a form of customer data integration (CDI) specific to the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations or groups of them will implement EMPI to identify, match, merge, de-duplicate, and cleanse patient records to create a master index that may be used to obtain a complete and single view of a patient. The EMPI will create a unique identifier for each patient and maintain a mapping to the identifiers used in each record's respective system.” It has been claimed that by using an EMPI for “correctly matching patient records from disparate systems and different organizations”, it is possible to obtain “a complete view of a patient”.
Known technologies relevant to the field of the invention include context management, single sign-on, CCOW or Screen capturing method for context interception.
Other state of the art health information exchange and integration systems, and conventional technology pertaining to certain embodiments of the present invention, are described in the following publications inter alia:    1. US20070118540    2. US20090125555    3. US20080189496    4. WO2007010485    5. JP6243152    6. DE10163469    7. US20040141661    8. US20090080408    9. US20040122709    10. US20040122719    11. US20040122787    12. US20040122707    13. Published US Application US20080046292;    14. Published US Application US20050144043; and    15. Published PCT Application WO/2007/084502.
Non-Patent Literature describing health information exchange through the use of semantic technology includes:    Comput Methods Programs Biomed., 2009, 93 (3), 297-312    XML technologies for the Omaha System: a data model, a Java tool and several case studies supporting home healthcare    Vittorini Pierpaolo; Tarquinio Antonietta; di Orio Ferdinando    Digital Society, 2009. ICDS '09. Third International Conference, 168-173    Semantic Exchange of Medicinal Data: A Way Towards Open Healthcare Systems    Puustjarvi, J and Puustjarvi, L    Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2009. EMBC 2009. Annual International Conference of the IEEE, 1726-1729    Interoperability of personal health records    Lahteenmaki, Jaakko; Leppanen, Juha and Kaijanranta, Hannu    Information Technology: New Generations, 2009. ITNG '09. Sixth International Conference; 308-313    Healthcare Applications Interoperability through Implementation of HL7 Web Service Basic Profile    Hussain, M; Afzal, M; Ahmad, H. F; Khalid, N and Ali, A    Computer-Based Medical Systems, 2009. CBMS 2009. 22nd IEEE International Symposium; 1-6    Ontology-based approach to achieve semantic interoperability on exchanging and integrating information about the patient clinical evolution    Miyoshi, N, Ferreira, A and Felipe, J. C    Computer-Based Medical Systems, 2009. CBMS 2009. 22nd IEEE International Symposium; 1-6    Semantic biological image management and analysis    Chubb, C, Inagaki, Y, Cotman, C, Cummings, B and Sheu, P. C    Lähteenmäki, Jaakko, Leppänen, Juha, Kaijanranta, Hannu, “Interoperability of Personal Health Records” (2009) 31st Annual Int. Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC'09, Minneapolis, Minn., USA, 2-6 Sep. 2009, EMBC'09 DVD, 1726-1729.    Miyoshi, N. Ferreira, A. Felipe, J. C., “Ontology-based approach to achieve semantic interoperability on exchanging and integrating information about the patient clinical evolution”, Computer-Based Medical Systems, 2009. CBMS 2009. 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Issue Date: 2-5 Aug. 2009 Healthcare Services Specification Project (HSSP) Service Functional Model (SFM) Specification—Decision Support Service (DSS), Version 1.0, Sep. 27, 2006, available on the World Wide Web.
The disclosures of all publications and patent documents mentioned in the specification, and of the publications and patent documents cited therein directly or indirectly, are hereby incorporated by reference.